Apple may soon introduce speedy mini-laptop (Reuters/CNNMoney.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

March 8 2007: 2:50 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -- Apple may sell zippy notebook computers later this year that use the same type of fast memory as music players and digital cameras, driving down prices of hard-disk drives, an analyst said on Thursday.

The maker of the popular iPod music player and Macintosh computers hopes to introduce so-called flash memory in small computers known as subnotebooks in the second half of 2007, Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research who has a "buy" rating on Apple shares and does not own any stock, said in investor notes on Wednesday and Thursday.

A shift to flash memory in place of much slower hard-disk drives would eliminate one headache for consumers: lengthy start-up times when turning on computers.
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Wu, who was among the first analysts to forecast the unveiling of Apple's iPhone music player/phone earlier this year, cited unnamed industry sources as the basis for his report.
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Apple would use a miniature version of its Mac OS X operating system in the flash-based subnotebook computers, Wu said, again citing unnamed sources. The computers could be introduced in the second half of this year, he said.
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more: http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/08/technology/apple.reut/index.htm?postversion=2007030814

A 'slimmed down' version of OSX would be nice, even without the flash RAM. :)

[formercia]

1. It's called freeBSD

"A 'slimmed down' version of OSX would be nice, even without the flash RAM. :)"

It runs fine on my 10 year old motherboard. It's what OSX is derived from.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Why aren't we seeing more of this...

instead of trying to make phones and blackberry gadgets into computers. I threw the Palm away after even an external keyboard didn't help much, and the synching was always PITA anyway. Back to little paper notebooks.

Years ago we saw attempts to make mini handhelds with usable keyboards and apps, and even now I know one or two people still using prehistoric Radio Shack 100s for notetaking.

I would love a cheap, usable "laptop" with wireless capability to take to the library or meetings and keep my data files on a USB dingus or memory card to dump back on the real computer at home.

Am I alone in wanting this?

Being Apple, though, this one ain't gonna be cheap.